


xanadu

by nowrunalong



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, Trains
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9927797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowrunalong/pseuds/nowrunalong
Summary: Buffy and Faith meet on a cross-country train trip. AU, set between seasons 2 and 3.





	1. tuesday

Buffy hoists her bag over her shoulder as she stands in line, waiting for the call. She feels antsy in these in-between moments: neither coming, nor going. Just waiting.

_God_ , she hates waiting. She’s never had the patience for it. She likes to dive and charge and run and go, go, _go_ , not stand in line and wait for someone else to dictate when she’s allowed to get with the forward motion.

“Train number 1, now boarding,” the announcer calls, and Buffy huffs out a breath. _It’s about time_.

She follows the line down the hall, around the corner, and up the stairs leading to Platform One. “This is your coach,” the man on the platform tells her when she flashes her ticket. It’s the same compartment as the rest of the line. Really, it hadn’t been much of a line at all. Supposedly more people will be boarding at later stops.

Buffy picks a spot near the middle of the compartment and plunks her bag down in the adjoining seat. She doubts there’ll be enough people that she’ll have to move it. She hopes not, anyway. She’s not really in the mood for conversation.

Boarding takes about half an hour. Buffy waits for the seats to fill up around her, but the compartment remains relatively quiet.

The other girl boards moments after the conductor announces last call. (Moments before the doors close, and the train—slowly, _slowly_ —begins to move.)

Buffy watches with limited interest as she throws her stuff over the pair of seats across the aisle from Buffy’s, but looks away after a brief moment of eye contact.

She’s young. Probably Buffy’s age, which means…

_Nothing._

Buffy shakes her head. It doesn’t mean anything. Just because she’s run away doesn’t mean that every school-aged kid is also on the lam. It’s summer vacation. This girl’s probably just visiting her grandparents on the other side of the country for a week.

“Heya,” the girl says, and it takes a second for Buffy to realize she’s being addressed.

“Uh, hey,” she says.

“You goin’ the whole way?”

“Yeah. You?”

The girl nods. “Think so. ‘Less something catches up to me before then.” She grins, carefree expression masking the slight apprehension in her words.

“Something, like… what?” Buffy asks. “You running from a dark past?”

“Something like that. And, uh—you? Parents ship you off to stay with the relatives while they enjoy a quiet week at home?”

Buffy shrugs vaguely. “Something like that.”

The girl smiles again, and Buffy thinks it means, ‘ _we’re gonna get along_.’ “I’m Faith,” she declares, evidently deciding to trust Buffy with at least one small piece of herself.

_Whether or not it’s real._

“Buf—uh, _Anne_. Is. Uh, my middle name. Which I go by,” Buffy says clumsily.

“ _Buff Anne?_ ”

“Don’t start,” Buffy warns her.

Faith tamps down a smirk. “Sure, sure. Anyway—looks like we’re gonna be spendin’ some time together this week. Hope you don’t mind a little snoring, ‘cause I need a hell of a nap before I’m ready to entertain anyone.”

“It’s like, 10 PM. Not exactly naptime. It’s more… regular sleep-time.”

“You have a regular bedtime? Damn, B. You need to get out more.”

In truth, Buffy sleeps whenever she has the time, which isn’t as often as she’d like, what with the slaying duties and all. “I meant for regular people.”

“I look like a regular people to you?”

Buffy considers the question. Considers Faith. Considers her dark, unruly hair. Considers her eyes, outlined with too much makeup, and her lips, painted dark red. Considers her single bag and her tattered pillow and her chipped nail polish.

_She’s not visiting her grandparents._

“No,” Buffy answers truthfully.

“Damn right.” Faith shoves her bag in the compartment over her spot and then flops down across both seats, her feet sticking out into the aisle. “So how’d you get your ticket? Steal your mom’s credit card?”

“Faith!”

“What’s the matter, B? Just tryin’ to keep the conversation rolling.” She grins.

Buffy looks around the coach but no one’s paying them any mind.

“I paid for it myself,” she says, “and I don’t wanna talk about it.” She shuffles in her seat, tilting away from Faith so that’s she looking out the window into… the super-boring blackness of the night. 

_Maybe I should just go to sleep_ , Buffy thinks, as she feigns interest in her surroundings.

“Alright,” Faith says. “Touchy subject. I got it. You can’t shut me out for five days, though. I’m gonna learn your story, sooner or later.”

“Why do you care?” Buffy asks, turning around again. “’Cause you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of caring. I’m _tired_ of caring about people. They always… die, or-or kick you out, or… something equally awful. They always let you down. I always let _them_ down. People don’t stay, Faith. We’ll never see each other again after this trip, so just—don’t waste your breath trying to be my friend.” 

“Yeah,” Faith says slowly. “You’re right.” She retracts her feet, pulling them up onto her second seat and wrapping her arms around herself. She looks cold, all of a sudden, and awfully small.

Buffy turns away again, repressing the voice in her head that tells her to offer Faith her blanket.

_Why would she take it?_

_It’s fine_ , she tells herself. _I can be alone for another five days._

The prospect seems terribly lonely, though, with Faith huddled across the aisle, closing her eyes for her long, nighttime nap.

_Good going, Summers._

Buffy finds her blanket in her bag and drapes it over herself, although she doesn’t feel particularly chilly. She just likes the familiar weight of it, here, in an unfamiliar place.

She listens to the sound of the train passing over the tracks, the whistle as it crosses streets in small towns, the rain as it hits the windowpanes. (Somewhere along the line, it had started to pour.)

She doesn’t hear Faith begin to snore, and wonders if she’s still lying awake, too, listening to the night as it carries on.


	2. wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> breakfast, dinner, and truth or dare.

Buffy isn’t sure why she does it. She has no real reason to feel bad for snapping at Faith the night before: what she’d said had been true, and besides, she doesn’t owe anyone her story. Nevertheless, she buys two chocolate chip muffins in the morning, and leaves one on Faith’s second seat.

No note, but the other girl will know who it’s from.

The compartment after hers is an observation car, with upper and lower levels. Buffy takes her muffin and a novel to the lower level—a room with tables and a couple old sky-blue booths.

She eats the muffin in one of the booths, but doesn’t open the book. It’s a little fantasy novel she’d picked up at a secondhand store, on a whim. She’d figured—train trip? Good time for reading. Now that the day has begun and they’ve escaped the rain, however, there’s more to see outside. Fields, mostly. Telephone wires. Buffy watches as they pass tree after tree. Maybe she should make a game of it: four more days of this could really drag by.

Still, the quiet is nice. The quiet is what she’d signed up for.

“Thanks for muffin, B. I gotta say, though: if I wanted to buy a girl breakfast, I wouldn’t leave it so close to her ass.”

“Ooh,” Buffy says, cringing a little as she turns around. “Did you sit on it?”

“Nearly.” Faith holds up her half-eaten muffin and takes another bite, effectively getting crumbs everywhere. She brushes them off her T-shirt with a careless hand and indicates with a gesture that Buffy should scooch over. 

Buffy does, and Faith sprawls down next to her, her legs stretching out and tangling with Buffy’s like they’re old friends. Buffy makes to pull her feet away but Faith traps them between her own with a mischievous smile.

“Do you have no concept of personal space?” Buffy asks, only half as exasperated as she sounds.

Faith ignores her, taking another bite of her muffin with one hand and reaching into her pants pocket with another. She pulls out five dice and drops them on the table. “You wanna play?”

“Play… what?”

“Dice.”

“How do you play?”

“It’s real easy,” Faith says, scooping up the dice again and shaking them around in the palm of her hand. “My grandma taught me, back when I had one. Ones count for one hundred points. Fives count for fifty. Three of anything is a hundred of whatever. Like, three sixes is six hundred. You follow?”

“Think so,” Buffy says. “But I-I dunno, Faith.”

“Dunno what?” Faith says, still shaking the dice. “First to ten thousand wins.”

“I dunno if I…” Buffy trails off. It’s not like she has anything better to do: she doesn’t want to read, and the fields outside are getting kind of same-old-same-old. “Okay. Alright, you win.”

“We haven’t even started the game yet, B.” Faith grins.

—

They play to five thousand for practice, and Buffy wins both rounds.

“Nice goin’, B,” Faith says, smirking. “Beginner’s luck and all.”

“Pfft,” Buffy smiles. “The dice love me. No luck involved.”

“You wanna add in some stakes?”

“What kind of stakes? I’m _not_ playing strip-dice. And—that’s… not even a thing. But I’m not playing it.”

“Relax, B. I was thinkin’ more like… truth or dare. Winner asks loser a question; loser spills his guts.”

“Love the imagery.” Buffy wrinkles her nose. She’s hesitating again—avoiding the question. She thinks about all the things she’s running from. All the things she wishes she could leave behind. There are so _many_ things she doesn’t want to talk about. Kendra. _Angel._

 _God_. Angel. It hurts just to think about him.

“Okay,” Buffy agrees finally, even though it’s the last thing she expects to hear herself say. “But it’s truth _or_ dare. Also: I get to start, ‘cause I already won twice.”

“Shoot,” Faith says, leaning back in the booth, her arm draped over the back of it, close to Buffy's shoulders. She’s still got that smirk on her face.

“What’s your deepest, darkest secret?”

—

Buffy doesn’t believe the answer Faith gives her for a minute. Or rather, she believes the story to be true, probably, but she doesn’t believe that it’s the _one_. The _most_ deep. The _most_ dark. It’s just a secret.

Granted, she isn’t sure what her own answer would be. In retrospect, the question had been overwhelming broad, despite its specificity. Anyone with their fair share of secrets would have to do some sifting to come up with the right one.

“There’s no way that’s your darkest secret,” Buffy says. She looks around, lowering her voice to a whisper before continuing. “Is it?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘dark’, B. You can do time for stealing. I reckon, more expensive the thing you’re stealin’ is, the darker the secret is.”

The train ticket had cost a few hundred dollars; Buffy still isn’t convinced Faith hasn’t stolen anything more expensive—her clothes are nice, for a runaway—but she doesn’t press any further. There are other people in the room who might overhear Faith’s… _unseemly_ confessions.

“Okay,” Buffy says, accepting it.

“Okay,” Faith echoes, and rolls to start Round Three.

—

Buffy wins this round, too, helped along with a roll of four sixes, which Faith had declared to be worth one thousand points.

“Winner, ding ding ding!” Buffy announces happily, as she tallies up the final score in the margins of her novel with a chewed-up pencil Faith had found in the windowsill.

“You gonna ask me a better question this time?”

“Hey,” Buffy says indignantly. “I was just warming up. That was a warm-up question. You’re really gonna get it now.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” Buffy tells her. “Are you ready?”

“For anything, B,” Faith says.

“Okay.” Buffy nods seriously. “What’s your favourite kind of muffin? ‘Cause, I _thought_ about getting lemon cranberry, since they’re healthy and all, but does anyone really want a healthy muffin for breakfast when they’re on vacation, escaping the realities of carbs and calories? And also—craisins… tasty on their own; the devil in a muffin. And blueberry’s good, but—”

“Chocolate chip,” Faith says, interrupting the muffin tirade with some amusement. “That’s your question? For real?”

“I think that… that getting to know someone is about getting to know the little things. Y’know, it’s not all deepest-darkest-secrets. Sometimes you gotta ask the simple questions.”

“You wanna get to know me, B?” Faith asks, leaning in closer. Her hair tickles Buffy’s shoulder. “That’s different from yesterday’s tune.”

“I wanna know your favourite muffin,” Buffy says, inching back a little. “And… now I do. So I’m good.” She grabs the dice and shakes them forcefully. “Let’s go again.”

—

Buffy had planned on going the ‘dare’ route, once had Faith inevitably won a round, to avoid all possibility of having to talk about Angel. However, when Faith dares her to go up to the cute business-guy three tables down and pull his tie off—“and bring it back to me, ‘cause I’m _dyin’_ to see what the pattern is”—she changes her mind pretty quickly.

“Okay,” she says, exasperated again. “You win.”

“That’s kinda the point, B,” Faith says, grinning. “I’m the winner.”

“You just lost three games in a row.”

Faith shrugs this off. “Warm-up. You want your question or no?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause you’re answerin’ this one. Now, I had a bunch of ‘em in mind, you know, ‘ _where you from?_ ’, ‘ _why you running?_ ’, ‘ _what hand d’you masturbate with?_ ’, but I kinda peg you as the private type, so we can work up to those.” She smirks. “I’m goin’ with a simple yes-or-no for starters. You ever kiss a girl?”

Buffy realizes she’s been holding her breath a little, and lets it out slowly, relieved. She can talk about this. This has nothing to do with Angel at all.

“A couple times,” she says, honestly. “D-During truth or dare, actually. Y’know—sleepover talk gets a little too real, and Maryanne picks dare to avoid telling everyone how she made out with Lisa’s boyfriend—even though everyone _totally_ already knows—and all of a sudden she’s making out with you instead, and Benny starts cheering, and Maryanne’s parents come downstairs and make him leave, ‘cause she isn’t allowed to have boys over.”

Faith lifts an eyebrow. “That happened more than once?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Kinda am. I never been to a party like that.”

“You’ve never been to a _sleepover_? Where’d you grow up? Alaska, population of three?”

Faith’s face clouds over, but the crease between her eyes is gone before Buffy can be sure she’d even seen it.

“You win the next round? Maybe I’ll tell you.”

—

Faith wins round five.

“Time to get real, B. Askin’ the tough questions and shit. Unless you wanna—?”

“No,” Buffy says. “I _really_ don’t. Besides, I’d probably get kicked off the train.”

“I dunno,” Faith says, giving her an appraising look. “You’re pretty cute. I’d let you off the hook if you stole _my_ tie.”

“You don’t even…” Buffy shakes her head, giving up. “Ask the damn question already.”

“Alright, alright—no need to lose your head. What,” Faith drums her fingers on the table, “are you running away from? ‘Cause you’re running from something. I can tell.”

“Why? Because you are?”

“Maybe,” Faith shrugs. “But it’s my turn to ask the questions.”

“I don’t like this one.”

“Come on, B. You can tell me.”

“I don’t _know_ you. And I—I didn’t ask for this, okay? This was all _your_ brilliant idea.”

“Yeah,” Faith says, “and _you_ agreed to it. Don’t pretend like you haven’t been having fun. You’d be snoozing your ass off without me.”

“I’m not here to have fun!” Buffy says emphatically, standing up. Business Ed with the patterned tie turns around to look at her with a frown, and she lowers her voice to a hiss. “And for the record, I’m not running from anything. I just needed a little air, by myself. And, for that matter—I’m not even running away! My mom knows I’m here. I… I told her I was going. So… there.”

“Right,” Faith says. “And I’m the fucking Queen of England.”

“You know what? I’m done. I-I can’t do this. Just—leave me alone, okay?”

“Buff. _Anne_ —” Faith starts, but Buffy’s already gone.

—

Buffy’s kind of surprised that Faith doesn’t follow her.

_Good. I don’t want to see her._

There are hardly any people left in her coach: most had gone to the upper level of the observation car, or to the dining car for a late lunch. Buffy spends the rest of the afternoon curled up in her seat, doing absolutely nothing. (She’d left her novel with Faith, and can’t bring herself to go back to get it.)

The view outside is pretty much the same as it had been when she’d woken up. Trees, trees, fields, telephone wires, more trees, more fields.

She falls asleep with her head against the windowpane.

—

“B. Hey, _B_.”

“Hmm?” Buffy mumbles—and then snaps to it immediately.

Faith is shaking her shoulder.

“God. _What?_ ”

“Uh, sorry,” Faith says, with a little frown. “About earlier, I guess. I thought, to make it up to you, since you got me breakfast and all, I could buy you dinner.” The cockiness from earlier is gone, replaced by a hesitant shrug. “I, uh. Made us a reservation. In case… y’know. You wanted to. Or whatever.”

“In the dining car?”

“Yeah. I had some money left from—wherever, okay? You wanna get dinner, or no?”

“I have conditions,” Buffy says.

“No personal questions?”

“No personal questions.”

“You got it, B.”

Faith grins, then, suddenly and brilliantly, and it’s worlds different than the smirk Buffy had seen so many times during their game earlier. She kinda gets the feeling Faith doesn’t smile like this often.

(She kinda wants her to.)

—

The waitress won’t serve them alcohol—Faith asks, _just in case_ they don’t check ID—so they sip ginger ale while they wait for the first course.

Or rather, _Buffy_ sips her ginger ale.

 _Faith_ gulps it down like she hasn’t seen water in days, and then stifles an enormous burp.

“Eww.” Buffy wrinkles her nose.

Faith just flashes her that signature smirk and then flags the waitress down for a re-fill.

“We eat like queens tonight, B,” Faith says.

“You realize this food was probably pre-prepared before we boarded, right?”

Faith shrugs. “It’ll beat rice-a-roni. What were you planning on doing for meals, anyway?”

“Well, I… uh. I had instant noodles for lunch. Literally instant. I didn’t add water, ‘cause I didn’t know where to find a kettle.” Buffy frowns. “Do they have kettles on trains?”

“There’s one at the other end of the observation car.”

“Oh. Well, that’s… good to know.”

“Yeah. Hey—first course is comin’ out. ‘Bout time, too. I could eat a horse.”

“Cow,” Buffy says.

“What?”

“Isn’t it, ‘I could eat a cow?’”

Faith lets out a bark of laughter, and then she’s smiling that smile again—the real, non-smirky one. The one that’s inexplicably making Buffy’s breath catch in her throat, and her heartbeat speed up in her chest, and her fingers tighten on her salad fork.

 _Unless it’s the main course fork? And who needs_ this _many spoons?_

“You’re funny, B,” Faith says. “I knew we were gonna get along.”

—

“D’you think they serve that chicken thing every night? ‘Cause a chick could get used to eating like that.”

“Can your, uh... _savings_ … buy you a second dining car meal?”

“Don’t think so. That was pretty much the last of ‘em.” Faith’s back in her chosen spot, her legs stretched across the aisle, her feet in Buffy’s second seat.

“Shoes!” Buffy says. “Off! I sleep here.”

Faith makes a show of kicking her shoes off onto the floor.

“Better.”

“Anything for you, B.”

—

Buffy and Faith stay up and talk about _not-too-personal_ matters til Business Ed needs to get past Faith to use the washroom. Faith swings her legs back around to her own seat, and Buffy draws her knees up to her chest and leans back against the window, pillow rammed as comfortably as possibly between her head and the rattling glass.

“B?” Faith says, from across the aisle.

“Hmm?”

“See ya in the morning?”

“Sure,” Buffy agrees.

Because Faith had been right, earlier, despite everything she’d said wrong. This trip would be a snooze without her.


End file.
